The 1929 Depression: Hey! That’S Perry County!

By Marvin Carpenter

What was it like to grow up during that Great Depression? Here is the autobiography of one such boy and his family. Began as a memoir written to preserve the history for future generations, it is a peek into life as it was. This book is great for others who lived through this time in history and would like to revisit that time and it is great for readers who would like to experience this simple time including its joys, sorrows, worry and triumphs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 16, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450284622

Marvin Carpenter

This started out as a project that my dad started as a favor to me, his daughter. What a legacy! As I started reading it, I realized that it should be shared with others that grew up in the same time frame, who had parents or grandparents who grew up in the same time frame or was interested in everyday life in a rural area of Mississippi during the depression. I feel very blessed to have this book to hand down to future generations! Due to finances, after his service to our country during WWII, my dad moved to the big city of Houston, Texas where he still lives. His heart, however, never left Perry County, Mississippi. Brenda Bradley

Book preview

Contents

Introduction

Remembering Back

A Family with Love

That Was My Mama

That Was My Daddy

Around the Barnyard

Around the Church

Around The House

My School, My Teacher,

My Stupidity

In The Woods and Fields

We Believed…

Back Then

City Life

Culture Change

Precious Memories

In Closing

Let’s Go Fishing

marvin and lucy.psd

Marvin and Lucy Ree Carpenter

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Marvin Carpenter revisiting The Old Eddy

marvin and lee.psd

Marvin Carpenter and Lee Allen Travis revisiting

The Old Eddy 

a house found.psd

A house found that is similar to one Marvin Carpenter grew up in.

Introduction

I was born in Perry County, on a one mule farm to John Palmer and Carmen Hodges Carpenter. We lived about fifteen miles from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where we said we were going to town when going to Forest County. The road to town has changed since I was a kid, and now it is only a few minutes from our old place. Thanks to good transportation, the road is now shorter than it was when it was a four hour walk at a fast pace to town.

I was born on October 7, 1925, less than four years before the Great Depression. My memory is very fuzzy about when the hard times hit. Mom and Dad had a Model T Ford car back then for a little while before we were back on our feet to go where we needed to go. I was four years old when I was in my first car wreck, but I don’t remember much about it. The steering mechanism came loose, and not being able to steer or stop the car, we came to a quick stop at the bottom of a ditch. Back then, the windshield was not safety glass. I was an easy target for a mishap being short, on the edge of my seat, and trying to see out. I went through the windshield, cutting one side of my head, on and under my chin, and under my nose. Someone came by, and to the doctor we went. The glass didn’t go through my skull, so all was okay.

Alma Lee was the first child, born on November 1, 1923. She was two years older than me, and the one that I always blamed for getting me into trouble. The truth is no one held me down to make me do what things we got into. For being a girl, she did think of some neat things to do.

John Palmer Junior (J.P.) was born January 31, 1929, and the one God blessed Alma Lee and me with so we could have someone to pick on. After growing up, he was a blessing to us in many ways.

Joan was born March 14, 1940. She was too late coming for us to agitate, but we just had fun babysitting her.

I was never very smart in school. Hard times were always waiting for me when I had to study my lessons. Passing from one grade to the other was always close to a failure, but I can’t seem to figure out who was to blame. The school could not teach me if I wasn’t there, and my parents had only a little schooling so I didn’t get a lot of teaching at home. When our winter fields produce came in, if there was a market for it and we had a chance to make a little money out of it, school had to wait. But there was another problem. The school couldn’t wait and hold other people up. After all, we are a little older each day that passes. I heard Mom say at different times that we only had two books in our home, and that was the Bible and some kind of an Esquire, something for kids. If we would have had books to read, we boys would rather have had a rat killing or something better to do than to read what someone else had written down. I guess we had enough books for us to learn from. If we really wanted to learn to read we had those two books.

School came in second place when it came down to either working in the field or being in school. Did we want to go to school and get smarter or stay in the field and survive? I know my mom and dad directed us in the right direction for doing the best thing so I never had much education, but we did survive. All wasn’t bad as you can understand as you read this book.

School put a lot of pressure on me because the class would get too far along in studies while we were out so many days. One thing that was hard for me was I didn’t know how to ask for help. I thought that was part of life, and tried to move on.

Summer time was not time to wear a shirt, shoes or hat. We only wore them when it was a must. There was no sunscreen to protect us from the sun, and we didn’t know when we got old cancer would show up because we got too much sun in our early years. Sunscreen reminded me of using marinade on meat before putting the heat on the meat. I don’t know if that is the same or not, but I guess we could have saved us a problem for our later years.

Somebody back then was concerned about our health. I don’t know who it was, but they gave us a small little box with a lid that fit like a shoe shine box. We were to use it for putting a sample of our stool in and turning it into the school to have it checked for stomach worms. One family used one kid’s stool for each of the kids in the family with the name of each one of the kids. The report came back for each kid to take medication to kill the worms! One kid, Bennie Lee Hensarling, who was Alma Lee’s age, said the worms would not hurt the kids because she had them all her life and it didn’t hurt her. I believe it, because they didn’t hurt me either.

Each year we were given shots in school. That was not for me either. I felt I’d rather take a chance of dying than suffer the pain. There was no pain in shots, but our brain said there was.

Our school was large enough to have a basketball team but no other competitive sport. I liked the game, but when I finally made the first team it was when the draft board had called all the older boys in. It wasn’t long until they called me into the service too.

On Christmas Eve in 1943, the mail carrier came and left a card saying to report to camp Shelby on January 19, 1944. I passed the examination and they asked which one I wanted: the Army, the Navy or the Marines. I thought of sleeping in mud, crawling among rattlesnakes, and getting hurt so I asked for the Navy and got it.

From there I was sent to Great Lakes, Illinois, for my training, and was then shipped to the Pacific Ocean where the Japanese were waiting. Hawaii was our first stop, and there I was assigned to an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) gun boat. The LCI was a long way from being as large as the Essex, the air craft carrier ship I went over on.

We left Hawaii for a trip that was very important, an invasion of Saipan in the Marianas Islands. That was the first of five invasions in WWII for me, the last being in Okinawa, one of the Ryukyu Islands, the last battle with the Japanese.

I came home to some people who said they didn’t think it was right for us to come home and take jobs they needed to feed their families. They didn’t go into the service and fight. Jobs were shutting down, people were getting laid off, buildings were empty, and employment offices got crowded.

I had a job with the U.S. Engineers in Pascagoula, Mississippi, a short time before they closed down. I went to Hattiesburg to work the family farm, but that didn’t work out. I went looking for work in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; New Orleans, Louisiana; Meridian, Mississippi; and Memphis, Tennessee. I finally found one several months later in Gulfport, Mississippi, in a sash and door mill that seemed to be a breakthrough for me in the job market.

I married a young lady, Maxine Hutson. That was the best thing that ever happened to me. Three children and sixteen years later she died of cancer. She left me with the best children from any couple: Dennis, Brenda, and Margaret. At that time I had moved to Houston, Texas, where I still live today. One and a half years later, I married a lady, Lucy Ree Clark from Beaver County, Oklahoma. She gave me a wonderful son, Derence. He seemed to be the healer of our problems when we had difficulties with each other.

I went through several jobs, and I am still working on the last job of my lifetime. At the ripe old age of eighty years old, the company has been good to let me stay and work for them. It keeps me moving this old body around for exercise, and that keeps me younger.

My oldest daughter, Brenda Sue, told me she would like for me to write down my childhood memories for my children, grandchildren, and others who will be born into the family in years to come. I gave it a shot, did my best, and hope the book will be interesting to anyone who may read it. I have had a good life, but it seems that all roads, sooner or later, will have a few rough places in it.

Marvin Carpenter

Remembering Back

Rita, the storm that came out of the Gulf of Mexico on September 23, 2005, made me think of my childhood. The storm was headed toward Houston, but it eventually turned so that the eye was to be far from us and we got a lesser part of it. I went to one of the grocery stores that next morning to get a supply of watermelons and buttermilk. I found that the stores were closed that day so I was without these things. I began to think of eating cornbread which we used to put in a glass of buttermilk and stir up. That was good then, and still good today.

Watermelon is also a good treat for us southern people now as it was back in those good old days. I miss being on the farm where I grew up. We would go out many times to eat a watermelon in the field; breaking one open by throwing it on the ground, and eating only the heart where there was no seed.

We knew just how to pick a good melon. First, we would look at the curl to see if it was dead. The curl came from the vine next to where the watermelon stem left the vine to the watermelon itself. Then, we would turn the watermelon over to look at the belly to check the color which should be turning kind of yellow by then, leaving the old white color that those things grow up with. The curl looked like a small root coming from the vine, and both the curl and color of the belly would be changing about the same time. Then, we would thump the watermelon with our finger. If it sounded with a tink, as a plate would, it wouldn’t be ready. If it sounded with a tonk, as if it was hollow sounding, it would be time for a watermelon festival. Now, when I check a watermelon in a grocery store I miss all the good signs we used as young people in a watermelon patch. Why? Is it the way they are raised these days? Is it because of the kind of food that they are given to grow up on? Or is it me? The watermelons don’t even taste as they should taste. You know, with that sweet taste those things used to have.

When I grew up, some people said a person could take colored water, put it in a jar with a grass string running from inside the jar into the stem. Then, after making a little slit to put the end of the string in, wrap it to guide the colored water inside the watermelon and change the color of the melon. I never tried it, but what about sugar water? That may make it sweet.

Buttermilk also tastes different today. What do people do when they make buttermilk for the public that gives buttermilk that twang taste? Do these people put milk in an aging tank to mature like wine in a place where air and germs can’t get to it? Do they mix foreign matter with it to make it preserve? Maybe they boil or heat up to kill something in it. Oh well, that may be the reason young people don’t like buttermilk today. I guess there are many of our young people that don’t know how whole milk tastes today. They probably wouldn’t like the stuff that tasted so good.

To prepare sweet milk for making buttermilk, we used to let it set any place in the kitchen that would be out of the way. If summertime flies were out, it would go into the kitchen cabinet we called the safe. Sometimes we would tie a piece of rag over the opening of the container (whatever it might have been). Then, we would close the screen door to the safe, and wait until the change of the milk. When the cream would rise to the top, we would skim off the cream and use part of the milk in the churn with the cream. Then, we would churn the milk by using a dasher, slosh it up and down until the cream turned into butter, take it out of the milk, and wait for eating time. We ate butter when times were hard and money was short. Now, money is big and the butter is short.

If we didn’t have a churn for some reason we would put the milk in a fruit jar, and shake it up and down until the butter was ready to separate from the milk. We would get so tired we would want Mama to make one of the other kids have a turn so we could rest, but I don’t remember that happening very often.

A Family with Love

As I have made notes about our family, we have laughed and joked about ourselves, each other, and sometimes at others’ expense. I was grown before I knew I was very blessed to be born into the families we belonged to. As a kid, I thought everybody was like us. Taking care of each other just ran over from the good neighbors we had.

Who was our family and who were our neighbors? All our uncles and aunts were, in some way, unique in one way or another. Even though we lived in some hard days, I never heard of any of us being losers because we had loving care from family members. We were all survivors, depended on our people, and we all came through.

My generation was following a generation that would be hard to beat. Mama had two sisters and three brothers. Two of them, a boy and a girl, both died at an early age. That happened before my generation began so the two didn’t have much history. Uncle Leon was the oldest of the remaining four. Being a merchant marine, he had a job most of the time, except when he would get tired of the long trips from one country to the other. Coming in from the sea, he helped the family some.

Next was my aunt Mary Lee. She made really good friends with us kids by being a good gift giver.

The last one, Mark, was born crippled. Someone had to feed him, bathe him, and stay with him most of the time. The doctors came up with the idea he may have had his neck broken during child birth because at birth the doctor had a hard time getting him to breathe. He took him by the feet with one hand and his head with the other, folding him back and forth with grandma in fear he would break Mark’s back. One of the doctors said he would never live to be twenty-one, but he died at the age of seventy.

My Grandpa Hodges moved several times, depending on the work he could get. He moved from Mississippi to Alabama to West Virginia, and back to the South; back to where the jobs were.

When the families were living close to each other, they spent a lot of time together. Grandpa worked in farming, carpentry, coal mining, guard duty, ship building, and anything else he could do to keep food on the table. Daddy once told me that my grandpa could always find work if there was any work to be found.

On the Carpenter side of the family, Uncle Burkett was Daddy’s oldest brother. He didn’t do too well in marriage. He seemed to know when to buy food for someone else’s table when he had a job, of course, and he did well in that area. He was a very good painter.

Then there was Palmer. He was my daddy. He was a good daddy to us. He spent a lot of time over at the grandparents’ house with his brothers.

Next was Uncle James. He seemed good as far as keeping a job once he started working with Mr. Miller’s Southern Glass and Hardware Co. He did a good job at making friends with us, too.

Next there was Uncle Oran. He worked as a section gang foreman. I remember him working for the M&O Railroad around the Pascagoula and Moss Point area. I don’t know when he started working for them, but he seemed to do well at his job. When I say seemed to do well in depression, I am talking about survival and hard times. I don’t know if these people knew the phrase extra money.

Uncle Bernard seemed to like working on cars. I thought he must have been smart to know how to make them run. I don’t remember where he worked, but farming was part of his living before the war started.

Then there was Woodroe. He spent time in Oxford, Mississippi going to college, and got into the grocery business. Mama worked with him some, and when I was in the store there was always a hello for me.

I don’t remember much about Uncle Henry. He was killed by a train when I was pretty small. Once when Alma Lee and I were on the trail to catch the school bus, he saw us as he was going to our place to do some work for Daddy. He quickly lay on the ground and acted as if he were dead. When we saw him, Alma Lee and I walked up to him very cautiously. Alma Lee tried to wake him up, but had no luck. We walked around him wondering what to do with him. This was a new experience for us, and we just didn’t understand how we fit into this puzzle. Should we go back, tell Mama, and miss the school bus or should we wait until after school? We decided to go on to school. Then, when we came home and he was gone, we would know he was still alive. If he was dead, he would still be there. When we came home, he wasn’t there. We thought he woke up and moved on, and yet I wasn’t too sure what happened; that is, until we saw him. That was a relief.

I wasn’t around Uncle Preston much, but I remember the quiet personality he had. Once, he was doing work with Daddy when we were living